by Paul Harris
“You see, Howie,” she said. “We ain’t about deals. We’re about changing this country. We’re about giving people back some hope. We’re about actually making people’s lives a little bit better, not just winning a goddamn race. If you ever got out of your little campaign bubble, you might see that. America is hurting, Howie, and we aim to fix that.”
Suddenly she could not stand to be in the same room with Carver. She got up and threw down a wad of dollars on the table.
“We’re going to fuck you boys up,” she said.
Carver’s cheeks flushed red.
“Let’s keep this civil, Dee,” he said. But Dee was rolling now.
“Fuck civil. Civil ended when you started pushing documents under hotel doors.”
She turned and walked out the door. This time as she left through the restaurant she did not care who saw her. She had nothing to hide and when she hit the cold air outside she did not feel it. She felt warm, on fire almost, burning brightly from the light of making a stand.
* * *
“ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT! I’m coming,” Mike snapped. The rapping on his door was so insistent he half-expected to see the hotel manager there. But it was Dee. He could tell something was different about her: a kind of frantic energy that radiated from her eyes as she barged past him. She looked like there was something inside her that she could not keep bottled up as she gestured for him to sit down.
She paced up and down a few times before she turned on her heel and casually tossed something small and plastic at him. He caught it deftly. It was a computer memory stick.
“Take this to your blogger friend, Lauren O’Keefe,” she said with a grin. “It’s time to give Stanton’s team some payback from my little vault of secrets.”
Mike looked at the tiny, white plastic in his hand.
“What?” he said.
Dee’s grin grew wider. “That dumb son of a bitch Howard Carver started a war with his tricks. Well, now we fire back. For months, I’ve had teams of folks pouring over anything and everything related to Stanton – digging for anything we can use. I’ve got myself a nice little weapons depot now.”
Mike put down the stick on his bedside table like it was a hot coal. But Dee ignored him and continued to talk.
“On that stick is a picture of Stanton when she was a student during the anti-war protests of 1974. She appears to be part of a group of people burning the American flag.”
Dee let words hang in the air and then repeated herself. “Take this to your blogger friend.”
Mike shook his head, suddenly realizing the scale of what she asked him to do.
“Hang on a minute,” he said. “I don’t want to be involved in something like this. It’s not right.”
Dee looked him up and down, as if taking the measure of him. Her expression softened. “Sorry,” she said. “I know this is serious stuff. But that’s what campaigns are made of; winning campaigns anyways. You’ve signed up for this fight, Mike. This is part of our job. We fight for our candidate. They shot first with that bullshit trick in the hotel. We have to protect our man.”
Mike looked again at the memory stick. He had a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I don’t know…” he began.
Dee sat down beside him and flung an arm around his shoulder. She ruffled his hair with her hand. “You’re a good man, Mike. Most of the folks on this campaign are good people. That’s why we are different. That’s why when we win, it will make a difference.”
She paused and then leaned in close to whisper in his ear. “This is how we win, Mike,” she hissed.
She got up and did not look back as she left the room. Mike did not watch her go either. He sat in stunned silence on his bed, the tiny memory stick on his bedside table filling his vision and his thoughts.
* * *
“HOW MANY of you folks have heard this speech before?” Hodges asked as his iron-blue eyes twinkled above his craggy smile. He wore casual clothes, jeans and a heavy shirt, but still looked a military man. That bearing never left him. A forest of hands shot up in the tightly packed rooms and hallways of the suburban Manchester home in which he held his third house party of the day. Hodges grinned broadly at the response.
“Okay, then,” he laughed. “I guess we have some real fans in here. So I’ll just stick to some of the classic hits…”
Then he was off, riffing his campaign speech with the expertise and familiarity of a rock musician playing his greatest tunes. The sound was familiar and the audience knew what was coming, but he took to the task like he played it for the first time, and the crowd eagerly awaited their favorite moments. There was not an applause line in the speech that most of them had not heard before, but they waited for them all the same and clapped like school children.
Mike paused for just a moment to listen and marvel at Hodges’ skills. The candidate – his candidate – was getting even better as the New Hampshire campaign took off. He was always good, bending crowds to his will, but he seemed to thrive on the excitement now. Hodges and his ever-larger audiences knew each other well and familiarity had bred love, not contempt. Mike watched as Hodges spent five minutes talking about the problems of just one crowd member, never hurrying the speaker along, giving her his focused attention, in a way that bonded the room together and forged them into one. They were not an audience and speaker, Mike thought, but something else. A movement. That was the right word. Hodges was building a movement. Mike reveled in the thought. For years he wanted to be a part of something like this, something with an impact. Now he was.
But he snapped himself out of the moment of reverie. He was not here to soak up the atmosphere. He was here to do a job for Dee. He saw Lauren tucked away in a corner of the room, tapping away on her computer. She looked up and caught his eye. She smiled and for a moment Mike felt the warmth of a pretty woman looking at him. Not a blogger. Just a woman. Just Lauren. He smiled back, nodded toward the door and tapped his watch.
“Five minutes?” he mouthed.
Lauren looked over at Hodges and evidently decided nothing new would come out of this particular meeting. Then she nodded back at him and closed her laptop.
Mike went outside and waited for her, hugging his arms against the cold despite the thick jacket he was wearing. He saw Lauren emerge and she kissed him on the cheek.
“Hey, Mike” she said. “What can I do for you? You got any news for me about the money transfer?”
“Let’s walk,” Mike said and they strolled down a sidewalk cleared of snow that cut a long black line through the white streetscape. Mike was silent for a minute and heard only the crunch of their footsteps on the salted, slushy path. He put his hand in his pocket and felt the memory stick in his palm. Lauren assumed Mike had not heard her.
“The wire transfer, Mike,” she said. “Do you have any comment for me?”
“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Mike said, suddenly snapping into the moment. “We’re still checking exactly what that’s about. I’m 90 percent sure it’s what I thought. Just a charity gift. But it’s sensitive, so we’d still appreciate you holding off for a while.”
Lauren pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “That sounds a little strange, Mike. I could just put it out there right now and see what happens.”
Mike tried to keep his voice casual. “Of course,” he said. “But this involves Christine and the Senator is fiercely protective of his family. He hates the fact that she has to be involved in the campaign at all.” He decided to push that line a little further, sending a message.
“He’s fiercely protective,” he repeated. “You don’t want to put this out there and then discover it’s just some Guatemalan bake sale that’s she been sponsoring.”
Lauren was silent as she mulled over Mike’s words. Mike felt a tinge of panic mixed with a rush of guilt. Had he overdone it? Made it too much of a threat? Still, that was the stick with which to beat back this Guatemala story. Now he had to get out the carrot.
“But we hav
e found something that might be of interest to you,” he said.
The pair halted. Lauren looked at him, puzzled. Mike could scarcely believe he was doing this but he heard Dee’s admonition. This is your job. Protect the candidate. He reached into his pocket and brought out the memory stick. He showed it to Lauren.
“On this stick is something we’ve found that disturbs us. It is a picture of Governor Stanton from an anti-Vietnam war protest when she was at Cornell. It shows her with a group of students, one of whom is setting fire to an American flag.”
Lauren inhaled sharply, as she looked at the memory stick in Mike’s hand, nestling there like a little nugget of gold. Or thirty pieces of silver. Mike willed Lauren to take it. It was a bribe. He knew it. Lauren knew it.
“This is some pretty dirty stuff, you’re pulling here, Mike,” Lauren said.
“We feel this is legitimate criticism. Senator Hodges is concerned that he is the only candidate who 100 percent supports our troops,” Mike said.
Lauren giggled. But it was a sound devoid of mirth. She looked at Mike, straight in the eye, and searched for some sort of validation, or some sort of release to allow her complicity. Then she plucked the memory stick out of his hand.
“Why me?” she asked. “Why not Drudge or someone at the Huffington Post? My blog is growing fast but I’m not in their league.”
Mike quickly put his hand back in his pocket, not giving her a chance to change her mind. He warmed his guilty palm against the heat of his body.
“You will be when you post that,” he said.
They both knew his words were true. This was a quid pro quo deal. Lauren’s silence on the mysterious Guatemala payment in return for an even bigger story. One that was sure to damage Stanton. It was an ugly, low blow. But Lauren did not have time for such thoughts. Mike had already turned and walked back up the road and Lauren’s guilt was rapidly replaced by excitement. Her cheeks blossomed with color and her head felt dizzy and light. Mike was right. This was going to make her part of the story.
* * *
HODGES SLAMMED down his fist on the table of his office in the campaign’s Manchester headquarters. His voice rang out and carried down the corridors, temporarily causing anyone in earshot to stop working. It was like a primal howl.
“I didn’t want this!” he yelled. “Jesus Christ! I’m campaigning against this sort of bullshit.”
In front of him was a pile of newspapers, all blaring the same story about Stanton and the flag-burning picture. It was a political firestorm that spread from Lauren’s blog to the Drudge Report to cable news TV in just a matter of hours. It showed no sign of dying down.
But there was no denying Hodges’ genuine fury as he stared at Dee, Mike and a half dozen other top staffers. He suddenly looked ten years older, his skin drawn tightly over his lean face as a vein throbbed at his temple. He put one hand to the side of his head and stared directly at Dee.
“Goddamn it, Dee!” he said. “I know Governor Stanton. She’s a good woman. She loves her country and now people will think we’ve smeared her with this… this…” He waved a hand over the papers in front of him, all of them featuring a beaming 18-year-old Stanton standing near a burning American flag.
“This… bullshit!” Hodges said at last.
Dee withstood his withering gaze and let the storm die down, waiting for the dark clouds to stop fizzing with lightning and fury. Finally, she spoke. Her voice was firm and quiet.
“No one likes this,” she said. “But look at these poll numbers.” She pushed a sheaf of papers to Hodges.
He picked them up and scanned through them like the General he once was, picking out the positions of the opposing forces. He put them down again.
“Are these for real?” he asked quietly.
Dee nodded. “We’re within three points of Stanton,” she said. “If we play this right and make the last few days of this campaign about national security, I think it will give us four extra points. Maybe even six if we get lucky. It can push us over the top. We can win New Hampshire.”
Hodges thought for a moment, glanced again at the poll numbers, and then placed them over the offending newspaper headlines. “Go on,” he said.
Dee stood up. She saw she had her opening. “Let’s drive this point home. Let’s make it all about national security. You personally don’t have to go anywhere near this flag-burning issue. You don’t even have to mention Stanton by name. The press will do that for you. Just talk about your own record. Iraq, Afghanistan. Your service. You know what it’s like to serve your country. That’s all you have to talk about.”
She left the rest unsaid but there was not a single person in the room who did not mentally add the words: “…and we’ll take care of the rest.”
Hodges stood up.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m not going to touch any of this dirty stuff. This campaign is about me and my record. That’s what I’m fighting on. Not bringing down this sort of shit on my opponent.”
Dee nodded and Hodges headed for the door.
“Oh, just one more thing, Senator. Is there any other part of your service record we should be putting out there? Afghanistan and Iraq is solid territory and we tell that story well. But sometimes it’s good to have something new. Perhaps from earlier in your career. Like in Central America? You were in Guatemala for a couple years. Should we be pushing that out there?”
Mike bristled inside, stunned at Dee’s gambit. He scanned Hodges for any sort of reaction, any hint of something amiss or a distant pluck of conscience or fear. But there was nothing. Hodges mulled over the thought.
“Not much to tell, Dee. Let’s keep it simple. Stick to more recent stuff and avoid ancient history.”
“Simple is good, sir,” said Dee.
As the group filed out of the door, Dee plucked Mike by the elbow and guided him into a backroom.
“That was a risky move,” Mike said.
Dee shook her head. “I had to test the waters. See if I could get a rise out of him.”
“And?” said Mike.
Dee did not bother answering. They both watched Hodges’ face intently as hawks looking for prey. But there had been nothing. No reaction at all.
“The stakes are as high as they can be now, Mike,” Dee said. “Things are going to get dirtier, so we need to know everything we can about our man.”
She handed him a plain white envelope. “A ticket to Guatemala City,” she said. “You leave tomorrow.”
* * *
HIS MOTHER sobbed as Mike answered the phone in his hotel room. At first he could not understand who called him amid the soft moans and cries. But gradually he realized what was going on.
“Mom?” he said. “Calm down. Speak slowly.”
There was a silence and then he heard the old, familiar phrase; the one he already suspected would be behind his mother’s woe.
“It’s Jaynie,” she whispered.
Mike shut his eyes and held the receiver to his forehead. He held it so hard it felt like the cold plastic might bore through his skull.
“What is it?” he asked eventually.
“She’s had an overdose, Michael. The poor, poor girl. She’s in the hospital. The doctors say she’ll be all right. But she’s in a terrible state. You have to come and see her. It’s not far.”
Mike felt a shiver of emotion travel over his skin like the reverberations of a beating drum. His mind swam with a succession of terrible images: of Jaynie in a hospital bed, of her collapsed in the street or found in some dilapidated squat or vacant home. His chest tightened and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. Then it was followed by something worse. He looked at the plane ticket that Dee had given him. It sat, accusingly, mockingly, on his bedside table.
“I can’t,” he said.
There was a stunned silence at the end of the phone.
“Michael, Jaynie is in the hospital,” his mother said, her voice level and calm but accusing.
“I just can’t, Mom. There are things g
oing on here that I can’t talk about. But I can’t just up and walk away from them. Not even for this.”
Again there was a moment of silence at the other end of the receiver. He could hear his mother breathe softly, her upset now replaced by an icy disappointment.
“Okay, Michael. I hope what you are doing is worth it.”
After he put down the phone Mike sat on the side of the bed and held his ticket in his hand, while her words echoed in his mind in an endlessly replaying loop of guilt and speculation. He had no answer to her question and, as he searched his mind to justify his actions, he found no solace.
CHAPTER 10
THE PLANE SWOOPED into Guatemala City as its engines strained to cope with a shuddering series of spirals. Mike looked down from a window seat over a city that spread like a blanket among a series of high volcanic peaks and knife like gorges. For almost as far as he could see, he saw slums of ragged shacks and grimy concrete squares stretched out in a bewildering mess. It spoke of an unimaginable sprawl of humanity, collected together and dumped here, so far from the neat orderly suburbs of New Hampshire that he left behind. It was surreal for him to be here as the plane’s wheels touched tarmac with a gentle thud. How could these two places possibly be linked? It seemed like some sort of fever dream. Yet here he was.
Mike passed swiftly through passport control and picked up his rental car, a tiny little red Fiat, that felt like driving in a rickety tin can compared to American cars. He guided it into the chaos of Guatemala City’s streets, thick with choking traffic, like a river of metal, flowing in and out of the capital. As he pulled out into a phalanx of city buses painted a vibrant red, he gripped the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles turned white. The young woman at the rental counter had warned him about the buses with a laughing smile when he told her it was his first time in Guatemala.
“We call them killer tomatoes,” she said.
He thought he misheard but now he understood perfectly. The giant red, rickety vehicles clattered randomly around the streets, swerving in and out of the traffic, oblivious to their fellow road-users. Aside from their color, they did not look like tomatoes, but killers they most certainly were. Mike thought about heading out into the countryside right away in an effort to eat some miles up on the long drive to Livingston before the sun set. But the traffic was such a shock that he decided against it. In a confusing series of U-turns and hair-raising loops, Mike finally spotted the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown and he emerged into a different world – one that he recognized. It was of tidy sidewalks, gleaming glass buildings and rows of neat shops. He spotted the imposing structure of a Hilton hotel and drove up to the lobby, gratefully passing the keys to a waiting bellhop. The man looked in puzzlement at the cheap, tiny car amid the hulking shiny SUVs that littered the rest of the forecourt, but gratefully accepted a handful of dollars as a tip.